Dead Head: A Dirty Business Mystery (26 page)

“That’s the most twisted logic I’ve heard in a long time. It would make a very salable feature film.”

“You two are gonna get along just fine.”

We had to wait for three men balancing a massive slice of soapstone on a dolly to pass before we settled into a spot around the corner from the Mazzo Agency.

“What was that?” Lucy said, watching the hunk of rock go by.

“I hear the apartment dweller in you coming out. That’s a slab of stone which will be cut into a countertop.”

Lucy had been wrong about Ellis Damon, but she wasn’t wrong about something else—when people lie, they frequently use or say something familiar because they think it will make the lie more plausible. McGinley may not have been in Springfield to help his friend The Countertop King get his business off the ground, but perhaps he got the idea after a visit to Nina Mazzo. I remembered how hot Nina kept her office, so I peeled off my jacket.

“Are you expecting to come to blows?” Lucy asked as I locked the car.

If Nina was surprised to see me, she hid it well.

“How about that—you know I have another prospective client who looks just like you, I think she said her name was Thelma Turner. And who might you be, Etta James?”

“I’m Paula Holliday and this is Lucy Cavanaugh.”

She motioned for us to sit down.

“We’re helping a friend and would like to ask you a few questions.”

“That’s very admirable. Tell me why I should care.”

“We think you or someone from this office delivered an unmarked blue bubble pack mailer to 197 Chelsea Road yesterday morning. Is that true?”

“I have a very busy practice. I really can’t say.” The famous discretion from her place mat ad was kicking in again. “Unlike you, I’m not in the friend-helping business. I do this for a living.”

“Do you know a man named Chase McGinley? He may have used an alias—scruffy guy, plaid shirt, down vest, bad teeth? He would have come in about a week ago.”

Nina’s face was so stony, she had to be holding something back. “Ms. Holliday, you don’t really expect me to answer these questions, do you? Why would I?”

“Because you used to be a cop and presumably cared about the law. Chase McGinley is dead. And the envelope delivered to that address contained blackmail. I think the two incidents are related.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “When can I go back to the halcyon days of CEOs cheating on their wives?”

McGinley had visited Nina Mazzo—he’d probably gotten her name from the same place mat that I had. He said he was looking for an old girlfriend who dumped him when she was carrying his child. She was blond, about forty to forty-five, and would have a son about fourteen.

“I gave him some basic information on how we’d try to find her. Of course I didn’t tell him everything. I wanted him to come back, but he never did. I may need to redo the
free consultation
wording on that place mat ad. This is getting ridiculous.”

“And the package?”

“Totally different case.”

Without revealing details, Nina told us was the item to be delivered was a pendant, a gift from a married lover. The client wanted to end the affair and make a clean break of it, but she knew it had sentimental value and didn’t want to just throw it away or trust it to the mails.

“How thoughtful,” Lucy said.

“She?” I asked.

Nina Mazzo’s physical description of the woman who’d hired her to deliver the package to Caroline’s home was next to useless. It wasn’t that she was not perceptive, she was—but the woman did her best to appear as bland and nondescript as possible.

“She was a big girl,” Nina said, “slim but tall, that is.”

With thick, dyed blond hair blunt-cut in a chin-length bob. She wore a plain navy suit with a striped silk blouse. Dark sunglasses. Not much jewelry, a ring with a tiny jewel-toned stone and a heart-shaped pendant. She didn’t speak much; she just stated the reason that she had come and produced the small white jewelry box in a mesh pouch. She showed Nina what was in the box, but Nina gave it just a cursory look before the woman enclosed a note and sealed the box.

“Her voice was raspy and she coughed into her hankie a few times,” Nina said. “I’m a little germophobic, so I hurried her out and kept my distance when we parted.” She said her name was Brigid O’Shaughnessy, “but I’m an old movie buff so I knew she was lying. I didn’t believe her
about the name, but I believed her three hundred dollars, as the saying goes.”

Didn’t anyone tell this poor woman their real name? Not-Brigid left the item and paid in cash. Mazzo never saw her again.

“Did you know the item was going to Caroline Sturgis’s home?” This was the first time I’d mentioned her name, and from the ashen look on Nina’s face I don’t think she did know.

“I checked the zip code. When I saw the address was in the high-rent district, I took the gig.”

“Did your man return later for any reason?” I asked.

“Woman. But, no, she didn’t.”

Lucy and I arrived back to my place with more new questions than answers.

“Can I open this wine?” she asked. “I think we deserve a drink.”

“Go ahead. I have to think.”

She poured herself a glass of red and flopped onto the sofa opposite me, kicking off her shoes and stretching out her legs on the leather ottoman. She flexed and pointed her toes as if she were in an exercise class. “I’m really sorry I have to leave tomorrow morning. This is getting good.”

The way Lucy saw it, Kate Gustafson had to be alive. What other woman could it be? Eddie Donnelley’s mother? A girlfriend? A homicidal former cheerleader?

“All those bitter girls who didn’t make the squad,” I said. “Now that’s an avenue we haven’t explored.”

Suddenly I wished that Caroline and Grant hadn’t escaped to Wellfleet. Until
she
called
me,
I couldn’t get answers to any of the questions that were stacking up like books in my to-be-read pile. She hadn’t given me a straight answer. Did she know if Kate Gustafson was alive? She’d
never
given me a straight answer. I willed the phone to ring.

And it did.

“Holy— I made the phone ring!”

“Uh, you did not,” Lucy said, circling her ankles and listening to the bones pop. “The person who’s calling you made the phone ring. Are you going to answer it or shall I?”

I ran to the kitchen. I didn’t recognize the number on caller ID.

“Hello?

“Is this Paula Holliday? I’m Kevin Brookfield. I think we may have some business to discuss.” I turned on speakerphone so that Lucy could listen in.

Brookfield wanted to meet. He suggested Chiaramonte’s nursery. Lucy shook her head furiously, but no problem, I’d already done that once and wasn’t interested in a return engagement. From now on any meetings with strange men, remarkable or otherwise, would occur in crowded, brightly lit locations.

“How about the Springfield Town Center?” I said. It was an enclosed mall that I’d been to once about three years back. “Seven thirty?” Click.

“You think it’ll be safe?” Lucy said.

“The man hasn’t done anything here except drink coffee. Maybe we’ve been too quick to think he’s involved in all this. Besides, we’re meeting in an enclosed mall, after dinner, in the fourth quarter. It’ll probably be packed with type-A shoppers who want to get all their gift-buying done before Thanksgiving. You’ll be there to protect me. What can happen?”

She brightened. “Can I wear the wig again?”

The Springfield Town Center was about five minutes from the train station. Brookfield and I planned to meet in front of the Crate & Barrel store on the lower level. Lucy would be on the lookout from the upper level. She’d be outfitted in her Caroline-in-disguise disguise and carrying bags to look like a real shopper. I rummaged under my sink looking for bags.

“I’m not carrying a Walmart bag. Don’t you have anything else?” I remembered the clothing she’d given me and resurrected the Victoria’s Secret and J. Crew bags filled with her own unworn purchases; she was much happier with her look, which she insisted was more believable.

“You didn’t even take the tags off.”

“I’ve only had them for a few weeks. How long did you have them?”

“Good point.”

At the shopping center, I grabbed a bench and waited in front of the furniture store. Lucy hovered upstairs pacing back and forth like a nervous talent show contestant.

I scoured the crowd. Everyone looked normal; then in the distance I saw a man smiling and walking directly toward me. Brookfield was more attractive than I remembered, but then I’d been busy and hadn’t paid much attention. It was his walk more than anything else. He stopped in front of me, the tiniest bit closer than I was comfortable with.

“I’m Kevin.” I stood up and we shook hands. From somewhere I heard a noise and out of the corner of my eye saw Lucy bending over to retrieve the phone she’d dropped. Ten bucks said she was trying to take his picture and couldn’t figure out how to do it. I pretended not to know her.

I understood his appeal and instantly felt a kinship with Roxy Rhodes and the Main Street Moms. One thing was certain: he wasn’t the man who had jumped me. With those arms he could have inflicted a lot more damage than just a bruised wrist. And he wasn’t limping. As hard as I’d kicked my assailant, I had to think he’d still have a little bit of a limp. Things were looking up.

“Want to go someplace?” he said, hands on his hips.

“Let’s just stay here, okay?”

He seemed amused by my security precautions, but after my first few ill-advised meetings, I thought it best to stay out in the open.

“Suit yourself.”

He sat down and we danced around the subject of Caroline and the nursery. If he wanted something, he was taking his sweet time getting around to it, so I decided to strike first.

“What exactly do you want from Caroline?”

“Well, that’s straightforward. Straightforward is good. I’d like her to end this.”

“End what?”

We stopped smiling at about the same time. Lucy stopped pacing upstairs; she must have sensed the tone of our conversation had changed.

“Let’s not play games. She’s been stringing us along for long enough. I want what she’s been holding on to. It’s what I need to make a new start. Then I’ll never darken her door again. I promise.”

Omigod. It was him. “Like you did twenty-five years ago,” I said, I slid farther away from him on the bench, and he pretended not to know what I was talking about.

From the upper level of the mall a cell phone came crashing down to my feet. Lucy had either dropped it again or thrown it to get my attention. I looked up and saw her struggling with two men.

“Help!” she screamed.

“Leave her alone, you assholes!” I sprinted to the escalator and took the moving steps three at a time, pushing shoppers aside. When I reached the top Lucy was being strong-armed by two men and I slogged through the crowd that had gathered to follow them.

Ordinarily, Mike O’Malley didn’t concern himself with shoplifting busts—that was left to mall cops and the junior men in the Springfield police department. In Lucy’s case he made an exception. I’d called him as soon as I realized she wasn’t being kidnapped—she was being arrested by undercover security.

True, Lucy did look suspicious with a crooked wig and dark glasses and two bags full of clothing with tags and no receipts, but mall security took O’Malley’s word for it that she was probably not a thief, simply another New Yorker with hard-to-fathom habits. That seemed to satisfy them and they let her go.

“Doing a little shopping, are we?” he said outside the security office. Lucy hugged him, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, he returned the favor.

“Martinets,” she said. “I could sue them. I haven’t been arrested for shoplifting since I was fifteen.”

“You mean you haven’t
shoplifted
since you were fifteen,” Mike said.

“Right. That’s what I meant.” Lucy caught her reflection in a Williams-Sonoma window and straightened her wig.

“Anyone who didn’t know better might think you two were up to something.”

“Not us,” I said. “Just doing a little comparison shopping. In fact, Lucy…”—I paused to organize my thoughts—“is doing a feature on secret shoppers, people hired by stores to check up on their employees. That’s why she was wearing the wig.” My explanation drew puzzled glances from both of them and I couldn’t tell who looked more skeptical at my stream-of-consciousness tale spinning.

When we parted, Lucy was effusive in thanking Mike for coming to her rescue. “Thanks for helping me beat the rap.” He left us in the mall’s garage. Then it was my turn to look askance. “Beat the rap? Is that wig too tight? Are you back in fugitive mode?”

We spoke little driving back to my place. The meeting with Brookfield was a bust, literally; but, as Lucy pointed out, at least she hadn’t been hauled off to jail. But I hadn’t learned anything either. Could I have misinterpreted what he said? What had he said that was so awful? For all I knew, Kevin Brookfield really was a handsome single guy who wanted to buy a nursery. Not that I had a chance to find out because he was long gone by the time mall security released us.

The red light changed to green and then back to red but my foot stayed on the brake as a very depressing thought came to me. “I may have totally alienated the perfect man for me.”

Lucy patted my arm. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

By the time Lucy and I got home it was nine-thirty
P.M.
Half a bottle of wine was left, and soon there would be none. I made a fire and we sat on the floor in my living room, drinking.

Mike O’Malley was Lucy’s new hero and she inundated me with questions about him that made me think she was more interested in him than she’d let on. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t mind. Maybe that was the real reason Mike and I had never gotten together. Maybe we weren’t meant to. I was still thinking about Kevin Brookfield.

The phone rang as it had a few hours earlier.

“Don’t answer it,” Lucy said. “I’m not getting into that wig again!”

It was good advice. I’d had enough drama for one day. I let the call go to voice mail and only jumped up when I heard the small, tentative voice leaving a message. I pushed the speakerphone button so that Lucy could hear.